The company is linking two products, including the recently acquired ScrumWorks, to create an end-to-end agile ALM platform

Linking agile application lifecycle and project management disciplines, CollabNet is releasing on Thursday ScrumWorks Pro 4.4, a project and program management product that is integrated with the company's TeamForge ALM platform.

The combination provides an end-to-end agile ALM platform for distributed software development, CollabNet said. Scrum is a method of agile development that leverages iterative, incremental development as opposed to development done in traditional, pre-planned phases, said Victor Szalvay, CTO of the CollabNet Scrumworks business unit. The company acquired ScrumWorks when it bought Danube Technologies in February.

ScrumWorks artifacts such as sprints, tasks, releases, and themes can be linked with source code, wiki entries, email messages, and bugs in TeamForge, CollabNet said. Users of the products can modify scrum assets in the other to boost team collaboration, the company said. TeamForge offers tracing and advanced search available to both products.

"Essentially, TeamForge, if you think about it, is a generic platform that allows for all types of development," Szalvay said.

"ScrumWorks, on the other hand is purely a project management system," for agile projects, particularly scrum, he said. Integrating the two products means developers using ScrumWorks can link up with the rest of the development organization via TeamForge, he said.

Only those with version 4.4 of ScrumWorks can take advantage of the integration. "Folks with previous versions will need to upgrade," Szalvay said. Users on subscription or support arrangements get the upgrade automatically.

Distributed agile teams with visibility issues will benefit from the traceability provided by the integration, the company said. TeamForge search also improves data visibility and asset reuse for ScrumWork Pro users. TeamForge is offered in hosted and behind-the-firewall versions.

Integration between TeamForge and ScrumWorks is done via the CollabNet Connector Framework, which provides bi-directional syncing.

Version 4.4 also features changes to the ScrumWorks API to enable syncing with other tools and ensure backward compatibility. Community-requested features are included such as "Estimated vs. Actual" reporting and and "Original Task Estimates" field.